Finding Your Real Best Colors
Which color season is depicted in Images A and B?
Image A:
Image B:
Answer: all color swatches in Images A and B come from the exact same palette—from Kim Kardashian’s Dark Autumn season.
And yet if you’re like me, you see Kim as more harmonious in one of those Images than the other… but why?
Today we’ll explore how finding your ultimate best colors requires just three main steps:
Find your style essences and essence order (and optionally your essence percentages)
Identify your color season and your neighbor season (more on what exactly that means below!)
Choose colors at the intersection of these three factors (your essences, color season, and neighbor season)
We’ll go through these steps to find some of the best colors for three Autumn celebrities:
Soft Autumn Cara Delevingne, a Dramatic Gamine Ethereal
With a cameo from Soft Autumn Behati Prinsloo, a Natural Classic Dramatic
True Autumn Olivia Palermo, an Ingenue Ethereal Dramatic
Dark Autumn Kim Kardashian, a Romantic Dramatic Ethereal
Finding Your Best Colors: Soft Autumn Cara Delevingne
Step 1: Find your essences and essence order
Cara has a fascinating style type and season.
She has one of the boldest essence blends possible (highly Dramatic with notable Gamine and a small amount of Ethereal) and one of the gentlest of all color seasons (Soft Autumn).
Supermodel Cara Delevingne has imposing Dramatic, teasing Gamine, and mystical Ethereal vibes.
She’s stunning in Ethereal Dramatic Gamine’s “Edgy Mermaid” or “Siren” aesthetic.
The Dramatic, Gamine, and Ethereal essences capture Cara’s mermaid-like beauty.
Step 2: Find your color season and neighbor season
Above, the warm, deep teal appears amazing for Cara, making Autumn a strong possibility for her season.
What isn’t ideal for her is cool or vivid hues:
Playfully edgy styling is great for Gamine and Dramatic. But here Cara’s skin tone appears warmer and more blended than her shirt’s deep and vivid color.
This is further evidence that she has a warm, muted season.
The best evidence is how good she looks in Autumn colors, like this burnt orange eye makeup:
So gorgeous. Here Cara’s skin tone, eyeshadow, and hair color all share a similar warm, soft, blended quality.
(Especially her hair color toward her roots—you can see that the ends appear brighter than her skin tone, making Spring even less of a possibility for her.)
And based on carefully draping Cara in all 12 seasonal palettes, her color season is Soft Autumn.
But what about her neighbor season?
On the color wheel, each of the 12 seasons sits in between two others:
Your “neighbor season” will be one of the two seasons that’s next to your own season on the color wheel.
So if you’re a Soft Autumn, your neighbor season will be either Soft Summer or True Autumn.
Meaning, your skin tone will either be closer to A. the very soft, neutral-cool tones that characterize Soft Summer or B. the very warm, rich tones that characterize True Autumn.
Why learn your neighbor season?
Just as the colors within your personal season have different depths (meaning, they aren’t all the same lightness or darkness), they can also differ on chroma (softness vs. brightness) and sometimes on hue (warmth vs. coolness).
So, for instance, in the Soft Autumn palette, some colors are darker than others; some are warmer than others; and some are brighter than others.
And so if you’re a Soft Autumn, then even within your own season, some Soft Autumn colors will be more similar to and harmonious with your specific skin tone than others.
So learning your neighbor season can help reveal your ultimate best shades.
Find your neighbor season
To find your neighbor season, you’ll simply want to:
Compare yourself to the two seasons that border your own season.
And determine which of those two seasons harmonizes better with your own skin tone.
Based on my analysis, Cara is more flattered by True Autumn than Soft Summer colors. So True Autumn is her neighbor season.
In this photo, one makeup element appears slightly intense for Cara’s personal coloring: the red lip. That red appears to be a rich True Autumn shade.
But I actually think it’s very close to working for her. She can almost pull off True Autumn colors, which makes sense, because True Autumn is her neighbor season.
As a Soft Autumn, Cara’s best colors will all come from within her Soft Autumn palette. But since her neighbor season is True Autumn, her best colors will likely be the richer, warmer hues from within her own palette (as opposed to the cooler, most muted ones).
Step 3: Find the colors at the intersection of your style essences and your personal coloring
Cara’s essences’ best colors are:
Medium or deep purples, blues, and blue-greens (excellent for all three of her essences)
Medium or deep reds and oranges (which especially flatter Dramatic and Gamine, and sometimes Ethereal, if they create a “sunset” effect)
Cara’s personal coloring is:
Most flattered by Soft Autumn colors
Specifically most flattered by Soft Autumn colors that are closer to rich, very warm True Autumn shades than muted, cool-leaning Soft Summer shades
Let’s put it all together and find some of Cara’s best Soft Autumn colors:
Cara is breathtaking surrounded by these Soft Autumn hues (even without lips! Ideally this process would be done with a full image of a person’s face, but I wanted to make sure the True Autumn lip didn’t influence our observations). Interestingly, even though Dramatic and Gamine are great in bold shades like red and orange, I thought that purples, blues, and teals overall seemed just as, if not more flattering on Cara, perhaps because they’re also iconic for Ethereal. Plus in this photo, colors like blue and purple contrast with Cara’s orange eyeshadow in a way that really suits Dramatic and Gamine. That said, I did think that Soft Autumn’s more pigmented red was also one of her best shades.
And here’s some colors that, while gorgeous in themselves, are less ideal for Cara’s personal coloring:
Here her face is still beautiful. But even though these color swatches are a part of her Soft Autumn season, this overall image doesn’t feel as harmonious.
What’s fascinating about this is that earthy color schemes—consisting of colors like green, brown, and yellow—are stereotypical for a Soft Autumn palette.
But colors like teal, blue, and purple help create an otherworldly, “edgy mermaid” feel that’s much more ideal for Cara’s vibe:
Even though Cara has a gentle color season, she’s more flattered by the bolder-feeling left image.
The colors in the left image are also a good fit for her neighbor season.
Specifically, since Cara is a Soft Autumn who borders on True Autumn, her best colors are richer than, and not quite as muted as, the most stereotypical Soft Autumn hues.
In fact, if you saw the above colors (left image) in the wild, without knowing what season they were from, I think many people wouldn’t recognize them as Soft. That’s because I purposefully selected some of the less muted colors from within Soft Autumn.
Unique Beauty
What’s neat about this exercise is that the results could be very different for a different Soft Autumn—say, one who has strongly Natural beauty or a neighbor season of Soft Summer.
For that Soft Autumn, the colors on the right image—the earthy palette—would likely be better for expressing this person’s down-to-earth beauty:
Model Behati Prinsloo has primarily Natural, some Classic, and a smaller amount of Dramatic. So the earthy palette with neutrals (right) appears more connected to her down-to-earth vibe than the left palette. That said, I’d have to analyze her more thoroughly, including determining her neighbor season, before I’d be confident in saying that these colors are her absolute best.
Conclusion
To find your ultimate best colors and color-combinations, it’s typically not sufficient to consider only your season or only your essences.
Instead, you’ll want to consider both together, and ideally your neighbor season, to reveal which specific shades from within your palette best bring out your unique beauty.
Finding Your Best Colors: True Autumn Olivia Palermo
Step 1: Find your essences and essence order
Olivia Palermo also has a wonderfully complex essence and season combination.
After analyzing her, I’ve determined she’s primarily Ingenue, with notable Ethereal, and a bit of Dramatic.
Olivia Palermo has an “Edgy Angel” vibe—sweet and dreamy, with a bit of Dramatic intensity. (Interestingly, her quirky fashion and graphic makeup often seem to embody Gamine, and while her personal style is awesome, I don’t think Gamine is ideal for her.)
Step 2: Find your color season and neighbor season
One reason Olivia is tricky to analyze: her style type isn’t a stereotypical match for her color season.
Specifically, Olivia has a True Autumn season—blended and very warm:
She’s beautiful with a joyful smile. Though here the thick, unblended eyeliner would be better for a Gamine.
The blush, lip color, and gray top also don’t connect with her, feeling overly cool.
The highlighted hair also feels slightly too fluorescent against her skin tone, making Autumn more likely than Spring.
Based on comparing her to all 12 seasonal palettes, Olivia is a True Autumn with a neighbor season of Soft Autumn.
This means that her best colors will come from the more muted shades in her True Autumn palette.
Non-stereotypical essence and season pairings
Olivia is hard to type because her top two essences are Ingenue and Ethereal—essences that are stereotypically most flattered by cool-feeling colors like light blues, purples, and pinks.
That’s very different than the most stereotypical True Autumn colors, like deep oranges and rusts.
So it can be hard to see her as having all of these qualities simultaneously.
(I think we see this phenomenon with other celebrities who have very warm True Autumn coloring and a dominant essence of Ingenue or Ethereal. One example is Julia Roberts, a True Autumn and Ethereal Dramatic Gamine. Part of why people have a hard time recognizing her as dominantly Ethereal may be that the otherworldly essence doesn’t fit stereotypes of her very warm or “earthy” coloring.)
Step 3: Find the colors at the intersection of your essences and personal coloring
Olivia’s essence blend is most flattered by:
Medium blues and purples (these connect to all her essences—Ingenue, Ethereal, and Dramatic)
Light blues, purples, greens, and pinks (these embody Ingenue and Ethereal)
And the colors that most flatter Olivia’s personal coloring are:
True Autumn
Specifically the True Autumn shades that are closer to (muted) Soft Autumn than (more vibrant) Dark Autumn
Let’s put it all together and find some of her best colors.
First we’ll see how important the concept of “neighbor seasons” truly can be. We’ll compare Olivia to brighter vs. more muted True Autumn blues:
The right image is a great marriage of choosing colors that flatter Olivia’s (Ingenue and Ethereal) essences and her True Autumn season. The left image also contains True Autumn light blues… but if you’re like me, you see the color swatches on the left as appearing a little vivid for Olivia.
I promise these four color swatches all come from the exact same True Autumn palette. With their intense warmth, certain True Autumn colors can appear almost Bright.
This is an example of how the concept of Neighbor Seasons can be critical.
Since Olivia is a True Autumn, and since her essence blend is overall flattered by medium and light blue, we might think that any True Autumn medium or light blue will be amazing on her.
But the catch is that her neighbor season is Soft Autumn, and so she’s most flattered by the more muted colors in her True Autumn palette.
So while none of her True Autumn shades are awful for her, her palette’s softer blues appear more connected to her overall beauty than her palette’s brightest blues.
Now let’s try something a little tricker. Let’s see whether Olivia appears more flattered by True Autumn colors that are optimal for her style essences vs. ones that are most stereotypical for her season:
To me it’s a little tricky to say which image is best. In my view, the 4 True Autumn color swatches surrounding the left image are a better match for Olivia’s overall vibe: blue, purple, and pink emphasize her sweet and dreamy Ingenue Ethereal beauty.
But the True Autumn colors on the right have the more obvious connection to her literal skin tone. Plus their boldness connects to her third style essence, Dramatic.
So my opinion is that both palettes are great for Olivia, and they express different aspects of her beauty:
If she wants to emphasize her overall essence blend while still flattering her season, she can choose True Autumn blues and purples.
If she wants to emphasize her season’s intense warmth (and her small amount of Dramatic), she can choose hues like True Autumn reds and oranges. (Especially if wearing them in Ingenue and Ethereal silhouettes.)
Personally, if I really had to choose, I’d say the left image (especially True Autumn’s soft blues and purples) connects a little better to her overall beauty.
But I could also see someone concluding the opposite, especially if they’re struck by how the True Autumn red and orange have a more obvious, literal similarity to Olivia’s skin tone.
What might be a harder sell is if Olivia wore all of these colors together (notable amounts of medium blue, purple, orange, red, pink), because that could easily feel playful and Gamine.
Similarly, while wearing colors like reds, oranges, and dark browns is great for both Autumn and Dramatic, other stereotypical Autumn color combinations, like pairing blues, greens, and browns, won’t be as successful. This is because these combinations don’t have a strong association with any of her essences (and do have a strong Natural connection).
Conclusion
Finding your “best colors” doesn’t mean deciding that you look best in lime green and hot pink and thus must wear head-to-toe lime green and hot pink every day for the rest of your life.
Instead, it typically means finding many different colors that strongly connect to your natural beauty. Then you can wear those colors whenever you want—every day, just on special occasions, or somewhere in between.
If you have an amazingly versatile essence and season combination, like Ingenue Ethereal Dramatic paired with True Autumn, then this can give you a lot of options.
You may find you’re fantastic in the more delicate-feeling blues and purples that are an iconic match for Ethereal and Ingenue, and the deep reds and oranges that are iconic for your season and connect to Dramatic.
Finding Your Best Colors: Dark Autumn Kim Kardashian
Step 1: Find your essences and essence order
Kim Kardashian has dominantly alluring Romantic and secondarily edgy Dramatic and is great in “bombshell” Romantic Dramatic style.
She also has some Ethereal as a third essence. Some evidence for this is that she looks great in long, narrow Ethereal mermaid waves.
Step 2: Find your color season and neighbor season
Kim could easily pass for being a Winter, but based on my analysis, she’s a Dark Autumn (as are many of her family members). Often in photos you can see that cool-leaning makeup, especially lip products, doesn’t feel warm enough for her coloring.
With that said, based on my analysis, Kim does have a Dark Winter neighbor season.
This means that Dark Autumn’s cooler and brighter shades (the ones that have stronger Winter influence) will likely flatter her more than Dark Autumn’s warmer and more muted shades (the ones that have stronger True Autumn influence).
Step 3: Find the colors at the intersection of your style essences and personal coloring
The best colors for Kim’s essence blend are:
Medium and deep reds (amazing for her top two essences, Romantic and Dramatic) and medium and deep purples (amazing for all her essences)
The best colors for Kim’s personal coloring are:
Dark Autumn, and specifically the Dark Autumn shades with greater Winter influence (brighter and cooler than other Dark Autumn colors, while still staying within Dark Autumn)
Putting it all together:
These Dark Autumn colors are ideal for Kim’s style essences and her specific skin tone—they lean toward the brighter, more Winter-influenced side of Dark Autumn.
And some less ideal options:
These Dark Autumn colors are beautiful and do have some connection to Kim. But they aren’t as ideal a fit for her overall essence blend (their vibe feels more playful and Gamine or earthy and Natural). These colors also overall appear close to being very warm True Autumn shades. So they aren’t as good of a match for Kim’s Dark Winter neighbor season as the reds and purples we saw above.
This also can help partly explain why some people type Kim as a Winter: specifically, her best colors don’t necessarily feel like Autumn stereotypes.
Instead, Kim’s best colors lean toward the brighter, cooler end of Dark Autumn, and thus can masquerade as being Winter hues.
Conclusion
I love thinking about style essences and color season in this way. And I hope that it helps illustrate how any essence combination truly can look amazing with any color season.
Even essence and season combinations that seem far from a stereotypical match.
I want to eventually write similar posts about other Autumn celebrities, as well as Winter, Spring, and Summer celebrities.
I may do these seasonally (like not write about Winters until it’s actually December)… or I might start doing them sooner if I just can’t wait. : )
